At first sight, the damage to Moldova’s vital infrastructure might appear to be collateral damage from Russia’s attacks on Ukraine. But with global attention fixed on the Middle East and Putin still fixated on territorial expansion, it’s increasingly clear the Kremlin’s war on Europe has opened a new front.
First, attacks on Ukraine’s Novodnestrovsk hydropower plant on March 7 triggered a major oil spill into the Nistru River, the source of 70% of Moldova’s drinking water.
Two weeks later, as the European Union (EU) scrambled to help decontaminate the river, Russia launched a drone strike on energy infrastructure in southeastern Ukraine, damaging a high-voltage transmission line connecting Romania to Moldova.
The link crosses Ukraine, carrying electricity imports that Moldova depends on, particularly during peak evening demand. Moldova’s parliament has declared a state of emergency and considered a program of rolling power cuts as engineering teams work to restore the connection. At the time of publication, it said the line had been repaired with support from the Ukrainian electricity grid operator, Ukrenergo.
But that’s not to say it won’t happen again. Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure on Ukrainian territory, which had a knock-on impact on Moldova, need closer attention.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Moldova has recorded repeated violations of its airspace by Russian drones, which it has been reluctant to intercept, uncertain whether the incursions were deliberate or accidental.
But the latest incidents seem to be a step-change in Russian strategy. And the timing is telling.
The attacks followed approval by Moldova’s cabinet for the country’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The deal, signed in 1991, brought together 11 post-Soviet republics in a grouping headquartered in Belarus.
The move formally pulled the country out of Russia’s sphere of influence and sharpened its focus on EU accession before the end of the decade.
Moldova’s parliament also published plans on March 25 for the reintegration of Transnistria, a breakaway territory to the east of the country, which borders Ukraine and has been used by Moscow to pressure the government in Chișinău.
The territory’s troubled history stretches back to 1940, when Stalin merged the strip of land to the east of the river Nistru with the rest of Moldova. After the collapse of the USSR, it fought a short but bloody war of secession, declaring independence from Moldova in 1992.
Although the Kremlin has not formally recognized Transnistria’s independence (no country has taken this step), Moscow has used it as leverage for three decades, sustaining separatism through troops disguised as peacekeepers, a vast arms depot, and close ties with the local elite. Transnistria has also served as a haven for smuggling and tax arbitrage, enriching a small clique.
The Kremlin’s most powerful tool, however, has been energy, and Russia trapped both sides in a web of mutual dependence. Moldova paid inflated prices for gas and relied on Transnistrian electricity while Transnistria received Russian gas for free, keeping its industries and separatist authorities afloat. Its dependence on Transnistria was largely driven by sales of cheap electricity. And for as long as Moldova was dependent on this source of electricity, it had no incentive to build its own production capacity or seek to diversify imports.
As Moldova moved closer to the EU, Russia escalated, orchestrating three energy crises between 2021 and 2025 to push it off course.
That leverage is now crumbling. The Kremlin-generated crises incentivized Moldova to break free of its Russian energy dependence by initiating market reform and buying gas on European hubs.
In October 2022, it took the momentous decision to stop all Russian gas supplies and turned instead to neighboring Romania. Three years later, in the middle of winter, Russia decided to halt free gas supplies to its Russian-speaking population in Transnistria, expecting to create a humanitarian crisis ahead of Moldova’s parliamentary elections later that year.
The measure backfired.
Transnistria’s industries are now collapsing, and revenues are dwindling amid faltering exports. This means it needs urgent assistance.
Pro-EU sentiment, although still low compared to the rest of Moldova, has been rising in the breakaway territory.
But while Russia has failed in its efforts to conquer southern Ukraine and so create a land bridge to Moldova, and is unwilling to bail out the struggling region, it has not lost interest in causing disruption. The Kremlin made enormous and well-funded efforts to subvert the 2024 and 2025 elections, although these failed.
What then is Transnistria’s future? Without external support, it could be stuck in economic limbo and become a no man’s land astride about 20,000 tons of deteriorating and unstable ammunition left in Cobasna by the Russian 14th Army since the 1990s. Experts warn that any explosion would be equivalent to the detonation of a small nuclear warhead.
Moldova’s latest move to reintegrate Transnistria, by extending its tax and customs rules to include the breakaway territory, is a hugely significant step and will be interpreted as such by the Kremlin.
The draft law would gradually dismantle the special fiscal arrangements that have allowed Transnistria to function as a parallel economic zone for more than three decades.
If approved, a range of tax exemptions granted to Transnistria, including for energy-related transactions, would be removed, with a goal of full trade harmonization by 2030. A planned convergence fund would cushion the impact through targeted social support, while aligning standards and attracting investment. The plan will be implemented just as Moldova receives its biggest-ever aid package of €1.9bn ($2.2bn) from the EU.
Moldova’s moves are designed to methodically undermine Russia’s influence and the Kremlin’s security threats to the region. So far, the tactic has shown some success.
But there is no sign that Russia intends to go quietly. The Kremlin’s escalation makes clear that it is prepared to extend its hostile campaign across the wider region, even at the risk of leaving millions without drinking water or plunging Moldova into darkness. The EU will need to be very alert to the risks.
Aura Sabadus is a senior energy journalist writing for Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS), a London-based global energy and petrochemicals news and market data provider. She is also a Non-resident Senior Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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